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Oh man, monitor chat! Years and years ago, I was sick of my "hire-someone-to-help-you-move-it" Trinitron (good god why were those things so loving heavy), so I bought this piece of hotness: http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Review/17230,atec-neoview-al181.aspx 1280x1024, baby! This slick motherfucker had a TV tuner and a USB hub built right into it, as well as built-in speakers and composite and s-video inputs. It was lightweight and had a handle on top (where the screen meets the pedestal), so if you needed to, you could just grab it and run. It saw many, many LAN parties, drunken vintage videogame fests, and even service as a backup studio display for our university's student TV station in a pinch. It's also the only monitor I've ever owned that came with a remote. I had it for a few years until I lost it in a burglary, and I still miss it. It was so goddamn versatile. GOTTA STAY FAI has a new favorite as of 13:50 on Mar 27, 2014 |
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Mar 27, 2014 13:48
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uwaeve posted:To be fair it's probably your fault for bringing your monitor to a robbery. Look, buster, if you know of a more convenient way to watch Sanford and Son in the middle of a home invasion, let me know
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Mar 27, 2014 20:10
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I'd be very surprised if it ended up being non-hereditary. Practically everyone on my mother's side of the family is nearsighted, and none of them really do anything directly in front of a TV or monitor for any amount of time. My sister and I are only a few years apart--I spent my childhood loving around in front of early-rear end CRTs and she didn't, but our eyes are equally bad. Wow, doc, myopia and astigmatism? You shouldn't have! 
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Mar 28, 2014 13:18
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Humphreys posted:I think this is amazing. You had to flip the TV over for these to work correctly, and it made the colors on all of my sets go all wacky. Also, the picture was mirrored horizontally, so subtitles were a "no." Mentioned already is the (way cooler) eventual final fate of the device--burning poo poo. On a clear day, you could cut an empty pop can right in half. The death laser's intensity seemed to increase if you acted like a Bond villain. "Catch the wave? No, Mister Coke. I expect you to diet." GOTTA STAY FAI has a new favorite as of 18:52 on Apr 1, 2014 |
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Apr 1, 2014 18:43
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Humphreys posted:Well dammit, just as I was going up load a GIF of it burning grass (it works great!). I will reset and go for a can. Neato! I wish I still had my lens. I think it was still in the trunk of my "college car" when I finally sold it. poo poo, that car belongs in this thread--it was a 1989 Plymouth Acclaim. (Nah, gently caress that noise, this ain't the PYF BALLER FUCKIN' RIDE thread. Look at this pimp-rear end sedan)  Not pictured: the Type R decal I put on the back glass
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Apr 2, 2014 08:44
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Oh gently caress, I'd forgotten about the (terrible) flappy-lidded storage compartment below the ashtray. And the ashtray. Still, it was a decent college car. Great engine power and fuel efficiency, space for your friends/moving poo poo, and it only ran me $500 when I bought it. Insurance for it was dirt cheap, too. The speakers were pretty good, and the old lady I bought it from still had the stereo demo cassette that came with it. One side was a narrator saying something along the lines of "Thank you for purchasing a car with a STEREO SOUND SYSTEM" and had tones to test the balance and fade. The other side, though, had loving Kenny Loggins's "Highway to the Danger Zone" and Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine's "Conga" on it 
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Apr 2, 2014 18:26
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Pryor on Fire posted:Oh man for like a good five years there the market for the most extravagant shiny ridiculous blinky button filled stereo faces imaginable was a huge deal. I had completely forgotten about that and how stupid it seems looking back. The last vestiges of this trend are still visible in the low-end market. I bought an El Cheapo brand receiver to replace the stock unit in my '01 Cavalier (that piece of poo poo belongs in this loving thread) and holy Christ it was bright. Like, light-up-the-whole-cab-at-night bright. Seems like you'd get distracted pretty easily with all those multicolored 100 megawatt LED's blinking all the drat time. My night vision isn't the best, so I usually keep the instrument cluster dimmed, and oh boy was I in for a surprise when I got in the car the first night after putting that fucker in!
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Apr 8, 2014 13:56
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You Are A Elf posted:This is the stereo I currently have in my truck: The Clarion DUZ385SAT. Egad, that does look like a stock unit. It looks so much like the stock unit out of my '00 Accord that if I popped that in there it would probably fool just about anybody at first glance. Designs like this are way, way better in my opinion than the LED strobe light nightmares you see on the shelves nowadays.
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Apr 9, 2014 14:10
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That's probably real wood, too. That thing must weigh a ton. Probably not as much as a Trinitron monitor, though, so you wouldn't need a crane to lift it 
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Apr 11, 2014 12:57
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GE is an absolutely gargantuan company. One of the largest in the world. So, yeah, it's going to have its...rough edges. GE Money is a "good idea" in limited markets and circumstances, but is often seen outside them. GE Medical, however, is a powerhouse in medical imaging, and is advancing our imaging technology by leaps and bounds every day. GE's consumer electronics arm--the one responsible for the lovely discmans and TV's that quit working after six days--has gone to poo poo, though. They likely just hire Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturers to poo poo out cheap-rear end stuff and slap their logo on it so they can sell it at a huge markup.
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Apr 11, 2014 13:18
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KozmoNaut posted:"drat cyber-kids, get off my robo-lawn! Whatever, grandpa  How's that wireless T1 neural connection treating you these days, you fuckin' fossil?
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Apr 18, 2014 15:14
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Jerry Cotton posted:Do your arms have RFID chips? booooooo  Toss another vote onto the "I don't want this poo poo" pile. Jeweler's screwdriver and a tiny mallet. One tap rewards you with a satisfying "pop," and the chip is ruined.
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Apr 22, 2014 14:38
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SwivelTits2000 posted:No. You are literally the only person to ever express this opinion on the Internet. Bonus awarded if it reads FEED ME A STRAY CAT
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Apr 22, 2014 14:58
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A lot of TV shows in the 1990's used Video Toasters for their special effects, which were just Amigas running proprietary software. Seaquest DSV and the Robocop series come to mind, but there were countless others. The machine was ridiculously powerful.
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Apr 24, 2014 23:43
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I'll turn in my nerd badge. I honestly didn't know about the additional hardware--I visited a VT booth at an expo in Germany back then and the guy running it swore up and down that the machine was just an Amiga 500 with different stickers on it.
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Apr 25, 2014 00:57
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Thanks for looking up that Video Toaster stuff. It makes sense in retrospect that it in all likelihood wasn't a stock A500 with some fancy software. At the booth right next to the VT booth, I saw my first video capture setup (also running on an Amiga). If you brought a disk with you, they'd let you pose in front of the camera and save a few stills to take home and show your family and friends! It blew us the gently caress away. The salesman said that he could build a setup just like it if I wanted one at home for the low price of like 6,000 deutsche marks, which, at the time was maybe USD $3,000. I bought a new joystick later instead. I know the first thing my buddies and I did when we bought our Amigas was buy a decent mouse. When I shelled out for the swank-rear end A600HD to replace my A500  I also bought a
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Apr 25, 2014 12:13
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Oh, boy, MP3 player talk! Intel used to make gadgets and stuff, and among them was this:  The Personal Audio Player 3000. http://www.amazon.com/Intel-IDAP264NA-Personal-Audio-Player/dp/B00005OM4J It is easily the most reliable and durable audio player I've ever owned, and the battery life is pretty good, too. I still have it and it still works just fine! I think my favorite feature was all the faceplates it came with--there were lots of colorful 3D holograms you could swap out, and it came with software that let you design and print your own.
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May 6, 2014 14:52
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I shelled out for the Eyemodule--a camera capable of taking FULL COLOR stills at a whopping 320 x 240 resolution. http://www.amazon.com/Eyemodule-Digital-Camera-Springboard-Handspring/dp/B00004TDN7 I was really fond of the Handspring Visor. There were some really nifty apps for it, like one that used the IR port to allow the device to act as a TV remote. And, of course, the games. I must've spent hundreds of hours playing Space Trader on that thing.
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May 7, 2014 14:08
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Oh, Graffiti, you are the reason I curl the tails of my y's, even after all these years 
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May 7, 2014 14:40
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spog posted:My other half learnt to touch-type on a manual typewriter. http://www.staples.com/office/suppl...&KPID=IM1F91378 (they do, of course, make models that don't light up, but where's the fun in that?) I typed my thesis on one of these. Takes a bit to get used to, but once you get going, it's gold. They're dead serious about the "this thing is friggin' invincible" bit--it took way more punishment than any other modern computer keyboard could. It also has the distinction of being the only keyboard on which someone spilled a martini and I was able to keep working with no problem, so there's that.
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May 8, 2014 13:26
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atomicthumbs posted:Jesus christ don't recommend people try to type on these things, that's horribly cruel Y'all just hatin'--I used that fucker so much that I wore the goddamn letters off the home row. It was easily the best keyboard I've ever owned, and I only paid fifteen bucks for it. I mean, come on, it's a spill-proof keyboard you can roll up and toss in your bag for work or school or whatever. And, it's silent. Big project you're pulling an all-nighter on and don't want to wake the missus? This guy's got you covered.  you guys are totally right, it's bad and I should feel bad for loving the hell out of it
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May 9, 2014 14:49
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Zemyla posted:Wasn't that from Sochi? Nah, I don't see any tarps or wild dogs anywhere in that photo.
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May 13, 2014 12:51
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 I know a guy that has and still uses a six-digit ICQ number.
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May 15, 2014 18:13
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The P38 owns bones. I bought a big bag of them from an army surplus store years ago for next to nothing and I just toss 'em out when they get too dull. gently caress all those stupid twisty-handle can openers that barely work the day you buy them.
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Jun 18, 2014 14:28
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peter gabriel posted:Out of all the people we could choose as a metric, we are going with Weird Al? Sham bam bamina! posted:He had something of a comeback in 2006 with the "White and Nerdy" video, then his album in 2011 was a big deal because it was his first since 2006, and his new one is back to being "another Weird Al album". His music really would make more sense as disconnected singles, which is why he was brought up here in the first place. Prior to that, I think the last thing anyone really knew of that he made was the song "Amish Paradise," which came out in 1996. That's not to say he wasn't making/selling records in the interim--he just sort of faded away in the way that you hear about someone you haven't in ages and say something like "Bobcat Goldthwait? I thought he was dead."
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Jul 17, 2014 21:40
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:Aaah, memories. Floppies with a copy of qcrack.exe were all that was necessary for Nerd Stardom back in 1996 It never failed that the only guy around with that disk (not just qcrack.exe, but any sort of dubious software back then) was the most obnoxious piece of poo poo that nobody could stand, who would watch you like a hawk while you were using it to make sure you didn't try to copy it. You know, so if anyone wanted to use the software, they had to invite him over.
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Jul 30, 2014 12:42
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Elliotw2 posted:The game came out in 2000, there was a major thing that happened just a year ago and potentially had ties to video games. I'm not sure what President Clinton's impeachment had to do with videogames 
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Aug 22, 2014 12:38
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DrBouvenstein posted:It came with the worlds shortest USB cable Some of them still do  I bought a swank LaCie multi-burner for my netbook earlier this year and the cable they packaged with it is less than 6" long.
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Nov 25, 2014 15:55
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Wasn't there a big settlement earlier this year that was the result of a class-action lawsuit alleging price-gouging by RAM manufacturers?
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Nov 25, 2014 16:11
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Pastey posted:Wowza. Sweet stuff if it's not all hype. Eh, looks like a bunch of hype to me. They're marketing it as if each disc is made of stone, but it looks like they're really just regular discs made from a more durable plastic. "Unlike other storage mediums, M-Disc has a rock-like layer that permanently engraves your data in stone." It can't be both "rock-like" and literally be stone. And I don't know how the technology can be "proven for 1,000 years" if commercially-produced compact discs have only been around since the early 1980s. I guess good job to the marketing team for being aggressive, but I think it would be more honest to say "Look, we took regular media and made it stronger so your data will be preserved for longer!"
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Nov 29, 2014 14:59
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Zombie Chow posted:Speaking of cables, I wonder why s-video never really took off, and most general-use electronics still use those crappy RCA cables S-video makes your SNES, N64, and PS1 games crisp as hell on a decent CRT 
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Dec 3, 2014 13:18
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KozmoNaut posted:Yeah, s-video wasn't worth it over composite, but RGB from my Gamecube to a good CRT TV was glorious. The few GC games that supported progressive scan (the Metroid Prime games are good examples) were very lovely with a component hookup. I'll gladly take s-video over composite any day of the week if I'm playing on a console that doesn't support component output. The difference, at least to me, is night and day. I was lucky enough to have picked up a bunch of composite/s-video multi-cables for pennies on the dollar back when stores were just trying to get rid of them, and they're a godsend when you're hosting a "retro gaming" night.
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Dec 3, 2014 15:11
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DrBouvenstein posted:It was also used on medical monitiors (like for endoscopy cameras) for a while before it had mainstream home-use adoption, too. The list of things I wouldn't do to own that cart is very, very short.
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Dec 5, 2014 15:04
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The cart with the monitor We had a bank of similar 20ish" Sony PVM's at the TV studio I worked at ages ago. They're a lot heavier than they look. Each one of those fuckers had to have weighed sixty pounds. Clearest picture I've ever seen on a monitor, though.
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Dec 5, 2014 18:07
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We had a verb for making duplicate copies of VHS cassettes. "Hey, Aunt Kelly wants a copy of Tina's recital. Can you double-tape it later today?" RIP, double-taping. I'll miss you. I'll miss pressing play on one VCR, then stopping the tape when you realize it's not re-wound all the way, then playing it again, then hurrying to press record on the other, and waiting for the entire thing to play through in real time. And I'll miss hitting rewind on both VCR's at once and trying to guess which one would finish first.
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Dec 17, 2014 12:31
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DrBouvenstein posted:Is that actually a cable de-scrambler for getting channels you didn't pay for, like HBO and Cinemax? Those were definitely a thing, and got more and more complicated over time until you were king poo poo for a while if you had a magstripe (or chipcard/smartcard) device and could clone cards for all your friends once cable and satellite companies started wising up. Once upon a time, I bought a used enterprise PC that had a smartcard slot employees had to put their ID's in to log onto the company network. The root directory on the HDD contained a simple command-line program that let you copy any smartcard you wanted to, in case you had to make duplicate cards for a department. Or, you know, in case your buddies didn't want to pay for HBO and Cinemax 
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Dec 17, 2014 17:59
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Mister Kingdom posted:I bought one of those on ebay and it came with a pair of six-foot RCA cables so that you could hide it. *feds kick door in* "FREEZE, MOTHERFUCKER! Ha, two VCR's, just like we thought." "I have two in case one quits suddenly!" "Likely story. Agent Ricks, check 'em." "Huh. No little black box. Looks like he's telling the truth." *holsters gun* "Looks like you're good to go THIS TIME, but remember--we'll be watching when you try to make an unauthorized copy of Species. Let's go, Agent Ricks."
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Dec 18, 2014 02:29
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Companies like that also deliberately prey on the poor because they're the ones that are frequently in desperate enough situations to need it and are also too poor to actually sue. John Oliver sums it up better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDylgzybWAw
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Jan 5, 2015 23:58
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Bondematt posted:Foot pedals strafed. You couldn't turn while dashing, so the pedals let you strafe and turn. I got to play an unbroken one once. The tech was finishing up repairs on it as the arcade room at the student union opened and I couldn't pass up the chance. It was broken again the next day, and they never fixed it again 
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Jan 7, 2015 15:44
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Ron Jeremy posted:Shout out to the cheap laser printers. I have a $50 dollar one I picked up from Fry's and she's still chugging ~8 years later The Brother HL-22700W is way loving better than it has any right to be, for as little as it sells for. WiFi AND an autoduplexer? And it doesn't weigh a metric ton? Sign me the gently caress up
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Feb 11, 2015 16:18
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